Motorway areas have a symbolic significance: being the gate of the city. This symbol is multidimensional:
- The spatial dimension: the route of those roads is peripheral. The ring is a physical and material border: a city wall. It is only possible to pass them at some specific locations: the gates.
- The toponymic dimension (place names): interchanges are often named (something) gate. Massively used in France (porte des lilas, porte de l’Essonne, porte de Lyon), this way of doing is less frequent in the UK, there is still the Bristol gate at the west entrance of the city. This is a way to define arbitrarily (and artificially) the limits of the urban area
- Finally, and highly present in the video, the landscape dimension. The previous sequence was noting the relative non-urbanisation of the areas that are along motorways. The absence of construction clears the field of view and then offer terrific frames of the city, either visible while walking on the footbridge or driving. The arrival in Bristol through the M32 motorway viaduct gives a wide panorama on the terraced houses
The same terraced houses are incidentally seen at the beginning of the sequence. The footbridge above the ring road illustrates a front door of the metropolis: the image is centred, the horizon unveils the urban landscape, a city-dweller, equipped with the last high-tech mean of transport, dives into it. The motorway used to be only present in the sound environment, but become also visible when the bridge is being crossed. Beyond that is reached a rather desert space, wedged between two arterial roads. The Railway Path function is here mostly to be a cycle lane, with features (in term of uses) quite similar to the motorways: no static behaviours and a single dynamic motion. Some marks are nonetheless indicating that a few users have lingered and wandered there. The stickers have been glued by someone feeling in a state of contemplation, interacting with the Railway Path by appropriating it. This action conveys a message to the next user that will possibly sharpen its sight. As the camera goes on, the path delivers points of views that are more and more focused on the residential areas. Yet, even when it’s lying against the houses, the path stays distant from the city because it is outside the road network. The constructions are usually facing the street, hence from a former railway it isn’t the façade that is seen. The Railway Path benefit in this sense, from an out of the ordinary landscape potential.
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